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Firefox 3 cannot download files with white space in the filename

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When opening attachments in e-mail Firefox is unable to handle files with white space in the name. This is not the same as the white space file name truncation problem documented on this site (where file names with white space are truncated on saving.) The issue is that the browser will prompt to allow the file to be saved, but it will not prompt to open the file as an option. If I rename the file to remove white space then I do receive the "Open with..." dialog box. I verified that Firefox 2 did not have this problem and I can open attachments with white space in the file names just fine using that version of the browser (2.0.0.20).

This happened

Every time Firefox opened

== Upgraded to version 3

When opening attachments in e-mail Firefox is unable to handle files with white space in the name. This is not the same as the white space file name truncation problem documented on this site (where file names with white space are truncated on saving.) The issue is that the browser will prompt to allow the file to be saved, but it will not prompt to open the file as an option. If I rename the file to remove white space then I do receive the "Open with..." dialog box. I verified that Firefox 2 did not have this problem and I can open attachments with white space in the file names just fine using that version of the browser (2.0.0.20). == This happened == Every time Firefox opened == Upgraded to version 3

All Replies (5)

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I have never had that problem with saving or opening files like that with Firefox 3+ version on Windows 2000, and I don't recall that happening on Firefox 3.6 versions on Ubuntu 10.04. I can't say for sure on Ubuntu because I haven't been using it long (my Asus EeePC netbook came with Xandros and Firefox 2.0, which I used until March), and I don't download all that many files on the netbook.

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I just tried with Firefox 3.6.6 on MacOS X and it doesn't work there either. I get prompted to save the file, but not to open it. If I rename the file to eliminate spaces then I get the "Open With" dialog box.

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I have the same problem with windows7 os and mozilla

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I have the same problem with windows7 and firefox


Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; zh-CN; rv:1.9.2.12) Gecko/20101026 Firefox/3.6.12

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When a user clicks on an attachment with spaces, the filename is truncated to the first whitespace. While IE, Chrome & Safari handle this, Firefox refuses to accept mime headers with unquoted filename parameters. According to Firefox's bugzilla/knowledgebase, Firefox's behavior is the correct behavior and it's a problem with most webservers or web applications. This problem can be easily corrected by surrounding the filename parameter with double quotes.

Eg.

Response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition", "attachment; filename=\"" + fileName + "\"");